Shredder!

19 Apr, 2019
· by roy
· Read in about 2 min
· (226 Words)

No, not the TMNT villain or the kitchen utensil. Some years back I jokingly put “a shredder” on a Secret Santa wishlist, which I knew was way outside the roughly $10 range that locals usually set for Secret Santa gifts. I put a lot of other options on (usually food stuff like quezo de bola or Spam), so I wasn’t expecting to actually get a shredder. But I did!

It might be a bit weird to have a shredder at home, but I find it useful (occasionally). I use it mainly for shredding credit card and bank statements, for those accounts that still insist on sending me paper mail. I have this healthy bit of paranoia about having bank info on paper, since I know even an account number might be usable for social engineering attacks vs unsuspecting call center agents.

This paranoia extends even for the shredded papers. Mostly because of a scene in the movie Batman Returns where Danny DeVito’s Oswald Cobblepot was able to get dirt on Christopher Walken’s Max Shreck by painstakingly reconstructing shredded documents that had been disposed off in the sewers. So sometimes I like to dispose of the shredded papers in different batches instead of throwing them all out together.

This was probably the best gift I’ve ever gotten from a Secret Santa, I’m still using it years later!